by K. T. Hanna
She watched her friend deflate in front of her, before she looked back up with defiance shining in her eyes. “If we don’t have to worry about the kids, then we can focus on the other aspects of the shutdown and unravel those. How it initiated, why it initiated, and finally why that zone glitched. I’m not taking this lightly. I’ve separated out what we need to focus on immediately, and the kids, for once, isn’t one of those things.”
Shayla kicked herself mentally. She should have known better, but her own concern over her position, and the success of the game and company was eating at her. Of course, she should be worried about those aspects too. Clearing her throat, she used her best business-like tone. “Of course. Sorry for the inference. I’m just as concerned as you are. What are we looking at in the system?”
Businesslike was the best way for them to act. Laria had shamed her with her focus, and all she’d done was take away the joy her friend had at assuaging worry about her daughter.
Laria nodded and pushed over several charts that immediately flashed across Shayla’s vision.
“Here. Notice the fluctuations here, here, and here.” Laria highlighted various areas around the Curet and Cognitia Rainforest line. “This is where we had system variances leading up to Fable entering the zone. For several in-game days. They didn’t differ enough for the system to flag them immediately either, just subtle adjustments here and there, movements of characters that could all be within the confines of the predicted AI movement. Given the autonomy they all have, there’s had to be certain percentage variances accounted for in the computations.”
Shayla nodded, not wanting to interrupt the flow, and Laria coughed briefly before taking a sip of water and continuing.
“This was very gradual. The movement began in Curet about four and a half days ago, nine in-game days. Whatever it was, and I’m running more thorough checks to determine that, moved across to Cognitia and adjusted things a day later. Eventually, it moved back through and around the ruins, effecting several spots along the way, not the least of which was the Felling Fields. Small spirals of code have adjusted throughout the whole region, culminating in more changes to the ruins area, but since they happened gradually, they weren’t as noticeable until the system finally alerted and shut down to rectify itself.”
Laria stopped, licking her lips and taking a sip of water from the bottle she habitually carried with her again. Her eyes focused on Shayla, expectant, waiting.
Shayla mulled everything over in her head and had to agree the movements had been subtle. Such small differentiations that it didn’t appear anything was acting outside of expected parameters until it was all pieced together and the shutdown initiated.
“Okay, then. Where do we go from here?” Shayla nodded while she spoke, in an attempt to lend emphasis to her support.
“That’s where I need help.” Laria took a deep breath, looked to a point at the side of Shayla like she wasn’t quite ready to look her in the eye, and launched into what appeared to be a vaguely organized speech.
“I’m going to need to play the game and code at the same time. I need your permission, and not just you agreeing, like your literal coded permission to do this. Somnia doesn’t work the way other games have. The programing console can only be activated in-game if both you and I activate it. What do you say?”
Shayla thought about it. There were so many ways for it to get worse if they allowed the game and console to mix, but also ways it could definitely fix the problems they were having. “Twenty minutes until the servers should be stable again, right?”
Laria nodded, her eyes never leaving Shayla’s.
“Fine. I’ll code acceptance for you, and you can dive in. I’ll join you as soon as I’ve fielded the inevitable report.” Shayla hated paperwork some days, and wasn’t looking forward to writing this up. But there was obviously an internal problem with the game world, and subtle as it was, diving into it was probably the best way to help it.
Laria beamed. “You got it. Thanks, Shayla.” She smiled, the relief palpable as she opened the door again to leave.
“Laria?” Shayla called her back, having a last moment thought. “Make sure you check out the towns as well, okay?”
Her friend nodded as she closed the door behind her, leaving Shayla to her own thoughts. It wasn’t exactly a sixth sense, but she knew there was something off about all of this. If it wasn’t the AI’s, then she had no clue what was interfering with their system.
Murmur could feel the others fidgeting, speaking in hushed tones, and generally exhibiting a ton of impatience. It was easy enough to access them in one corner of her concentration. The other portion of it was reserved for concentrating on the voices, and partitioning them out.
Clearly available thoughts tugged at her, pulling her this way and that. Or at least they had in the beginning, so much that her entire mind fogged and concentration became a difficult concept.
But now? While she had no idea how much time had passed, she did know one thing: her ability to focus in on and filter out voices was getting easier. She’d managed to locate most of Verendus, Ululate, Stellaein, and Curet’s people. There was an undercurrent to their tones, to their accents. Differentiations that separated them from one another.
Their whisperings flitted about just out of her reach of comprehension. At least about the subjects they were talking about anyway. The fact that she could hear the buzz of an overwhelming amount of AI-based people when the game was effectively powered down was fascinating in its own way.
Sorting through all of the voices had been difficult at first, but even now, the inner thoughts were becoming easier to categorize and shut out, or to activate if she chose to listen to someone specific. She just had to remember that these weren’t real people. Not technically. At least not with bodies, though she’d beg to differ with some of the ways they acted and reacted, and definitely some of the thoughts running through her head.
She sighed. There was so much she needed to know. Listening to people who didn’t actually exist while floating in a black nothingness was probably the first sign she was actually going insane.
Your trial of darkness is almost complete. Just wait a while longer. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Murmur blinked, shutting out all the voices and focusing on the AI that just spoke into the darkness. Her friends squirming stopped too, and they looked around, none of them able to see far in front of them.
“Did the AI just tell us we’re doing a trial of darkness?” Beastial’s words were short, almost as if the miasma around them gobbled up some of the volume.
“That she did.” Havoc sounded thoughtful, and Murmur wished she could see his face better than the almost skeletal outline her enhanced vision fed her.
“‘Sorry for the inconvenience’ sounds mildly sarcastic no matter how you look at it.” Sinister’s grumpiness was tangible, but it made Murmur chuckle for the first time since they’d got trapped in this nothingness.
“The AI is always like that. I’m hoping it means we’ll be out of here soon.” Murmur frowned, reworking the words over in her head. “We all know this isn’t a part of the game, that something went pretty wrong in that last dungeon. They’ll figure it out. They have to.”
“What do you mean?” Veranol intoned. She could almost see the way he leaned forward to listen when he was overtly interested in something.
“Just that everyone is offline. The villages, the world. Our chats weren’t even working in the dungeon, or at least mine wasn’t. No one is in Somnia at the moment, quite literally, not even the NPCs. We’re all floating in this limbo, waiting for the world to be restored. I personally find that scary as fuck.” Mur shrugged. Cat was mostly out of the bag anyway. No harm in giving it a little push.
“Why didn’t you tell us if you knew something was up in that stupid ruin?” Exbo piped up, disgruntled.
She couldn’t blame him. From
everything she could sense, darkness was not one of his favorite things. And her ability to sense thoughts appeared violently enhanced in this resounding limbo. “Frankly, with my system constantly glitching like it did with the faction status, I was pretty sure it might just be me.”
“Yeah, but now you know it isn’t, Mur. Don’t keep shit like that from us.” Merlin’s words were gentler than Exbo’s. “We’re here, even stuck in here with you. Give us some credit and share stuff with us, okay?”
“That’s fair.” She acquiesced after a moment’s contemplation.
They were her friends, and they’d proven the lengths they’d go to a dozen times over. Even though she didn’t want to tell them how her mind was seeping further into the game, at least into this strange stasis they were in. Able to read and able to sense more and more. It gave her a heady feeling, like she was growing in strength. Maybe she should tell them.
Merlin crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow—at least that’s what she thought he did from the pale jut of his hip.
Murmur sighed heavily. “Fine. This void isn’t just a void, it’s like a holding cell for the entire game. I can hear them all, talking around it, in my head.”
She smiled, her breath short for an instant. She opened her mouth to continue.
But whatever it was she wanted to point out was no longer possible for her brain to comprehend. Screams echoed through her head, filled with pain, as the blackness where Dirsna and his brethren were opened up to a blinding gold light that sucked them through it. They screamed in terror, in agony, and in loss. It echoed through her head, bouncing around and completely disorienting her.
Just as it passed and she fell to her knees—or whatever because of the almost-liquid holding her in place—another series of shrieks began to fill her mind again. This time with more pain laced throughout, taunting her, tormenting her, ripping at her mind.
She clutched her head, gripping it tightly, pressing against her temples, trying to shut out the pain and sound.
“Mur?” Sinister’s concerned voice broke through to her briefly, but more howls, desperation, pain, and loss bombarded her suddenly from all areas she’d previously managed to keep separated, culminating in one huge din of noise in her mind, so much that she thought it would burst.
Murmur shut her eyes tightly as the same brightly blinding light that had hurt the villagers hit her square in the face. It pierced her mind, jolting her back into the present, dragging her out of all of the spiraling thoughts that inundated her, until there was nothing but peace, quiet, and light.
Her friends stood around her, blinking against the sudden shift in illumination. It wasn’t that it was so brilliant, but that the juxtaposition between the gleaming light colors around them and the darkness they’d been swallowed in was painful.
“Well.” Sinister coughed before continuing. “That’s a light in a dark place if I ever saw one.”
Beastial groaned. “That’s the worst pun I’ve ever heard from you, and you know that’s saying something.”
“Be gentle,” she countered. “I’m sensitive.”
Murmur was about to speak when a gentle whuff against her finger tips brought her gaze down. Snowy stood there, concern mirrored in his intelligent eyes, cold nose barely touching the tip of her nails as he looked up at her. Before she could really think about it, she’d reflexively dropped to her knees and thrown her arms around the wolf, who dog-grinned into her hair. At least she thought he did; it was the way he felt to her, anyway.
Shir-Khan stood next to Beastial, and Tiachi clung to the bottom end of Mur’s hair again, her huge eyes round with a tinge of fear. But she’d returned as well. Murmur let out a pent-up sigh into Snowy’s thick fur and stood up, brushing herself off.
A sense of equilibrium swept over her, and she glanced around at each of her friends. In the back of her mind she could still feel the partitions she’d made while sitting in that suffocating darkness, and the panic in all of them had died down, replaced by relief. The pain in her head receded leaving only a memory and dull ache to remind her how bad it had been but moments before.
“This is new,” she said, voicing what the others were thinking as she slowly turned around and surveyed where they were now.
Huge columns rose up around a massive indoor hall. It towered over them, revealing several doors leading from it where stairs were visible. Sandstone glory reflected the bright light of day. No black ooze, no mirrored figures, no shifting floors, and above all, no Riasli.
Instead, over by a door directly beneath one of the skylets stood a woman with golden hair piled on top of her head and a serene smile on her face. The sunlight that shone down to hit her illuminated her like a deliberate spotlight, exposing golden and pearlescent shimmers in the air, like glitter that wasn’t really annoying.
Night and day. Between the sunken temple, limbo, and now. Murmur took a few steps forward before the others could say a word, Snowy steadfast by her side. He was a little shadow she always felt safe with in here. Whether it was an illusion or not, she appreciated it.
“Murmur.” The figure spoke magnanimously. Her regal voice rung beautifully throughout the chamber. “We thank you for freeing the ruins of Cenedril from its darkest time in history. Fable has provided us with a service we cannot repay. Please, accept these gifts.”
The woman’s voice flowed like a song, soothing and beautiful. She waved her left arm elegantly and twelve chests appeared along the back wall. “One for each of you. The rewards you should have received, and perhaps a little more than usual. Gratitude is a valid currency.”
Murmur nodded slowly. Sure, it was. She glanced down at Snowy who had lost his wolf grin. But his hackles were down, and he wasn’t tense, so she assumed the woman wasn’t dangerous.
“Thank you. Are the children okay?” She had to ask the question that had been weighing on her mind. Had the elven children managed to get home safely? Were their parents still worried and guarding the city in that creepy way?
The woman smiled so wide it lit up the room for just a moment. “Yes, they are fine. All of them have been returned to their rightful place, and the gratitude for freeing them flows deep into the corners of Cenedril.”
Relief flooded the enchanter, and Murmur attempted to return the smile, but there was so much more filling her head.
“Thank you, again. But we are at a loss as to exactly what happened here.” Murmur frowned, not at the person in front of her, but at herself. Every time she interacted with one of these characters, she found herself switching into formal speech. Roleplaying had never been her thing, but this felt right and good, and it worked. It was the way you showed respect to powerful beings in this world, but it was never a conscious choice she made. Instead, it just happened to her.
The figure hesitated before smiling self-deprecatingly. “I am the true Naishi. Sadly, I must confess that you did not face my followers as they were meant to be faced. Instead, you freed them from an imprisonment of the mind, where their control over themselves was wrest from them. Even though you too have the capability to coerce us, you chose not to, and we thank you for this.”
She paused, and glanced at the others who were eyeing her, and then the chests along the wall. Naishi chuckled. “Go and open your chests. That’s what they’re for. I doubt you’d be able to lift them to put them in your storage anyway.”
Murmur hesitated, torn between wanting to open hers and see what she’d received and wanting to ask this Naishi all the questions she could.
“I understand, Murmur.” Naishi’s voice was soft and her gaze lingered on the other members of Fable as if she wanted to protect them from something. Concern glittered in her confetti eyes.
But just what did she understand?
“You might battle the dark, but you have the strength not to engage it. Not everyone in Somnia has that good fortune. Not everyone realizes when they’re about to
be taken over. We have our own ways of dealing with interlopers in this world, but there is a new threat. One we cannot deal with alone. Will you help us?”
Naishi’s eyes held a pleading quality to them, desperation underlying the hopeful tone she chose to use. The woman was beautiful, golden brushed skin, with red and gold robes, and her hair wrapped up high in an intricate design with pins stuck through it that Murmur had the sneaking suspicion were actually weapons.
There wasn’t really an option, and this request didn’t seem to follow the similar pattern she’d seen forming previously. Of course, that was Somnia in a nutshell. Unpredictable.
“We will help you,” she responded. Given everything she’d experienced while in limbo—everything she’d heard and learned, the boundaries she’d tested—helping only seemed the logical choice. While she didn’t know what the threat might be, Murmur had a gut feeling that whatever it was might help her get closer to figuring out how to get back to her damned body.
Somnia Online
Richnai Fortress - Firtulai Continent
Day Fifteen
Masha materialized straight back into where he’d been when the server shut down. As soon as they’d come back up, he’d logged in so fast it wasn’t funny. He’d been on a call with Ishwa, trying to figure out how to deal with this Spiral guild. Sure enough, as he finished solidifying, Masha noticed a few things.
First up, the mobs hadn’t respawned. Apparently, the game remembered when and where things had been at the time of the shutdown and had acted accordingly. It was good in a way, and yet not in another. Secondly, his guild peers logged in around him, flashing up quickly, loading in to their full form.
